Getting a buzz from booze may boost creativity. Men who drank themselves tipsy solved more problems demanding verbal resourcefulness in less time than sober guys did, a new study finds.

Sudden, intuitive insights into tricky word-association problems occurred more frequently when men were intoxicated but not legally drunk…Sober men took a more deliberative approach to this task.

A moderate alcoholic high loosens a person’s focus of attention, making it easier to find connections among remotely related ideas…Jarosz and University of Illinois psychologist Jennifer Wiley, a study coauthor, suspect their finding applies to musical and artistic inspiration. “A composer or artist fixated on previous work may indeed find creative benefits from intoxication,” they say.

Other preliminary evidence – some from the Chicago team — finds a creative bump from additional approaches to broadening attention’s scope, such as watching a mood-enhancing movie or using biofeedback to reach a relaxed mental state.

Jarosz’s team offers an intriguing glimpse at how an alcoholic buzz prompts intuitive insights into problems that require searching pre-existing knowledge, … Further studies with intoxicated volunteers should employ complex problems that require information gathering and recognition of novel patterns, key features of many real-life problems, Beeman suggests.

Intoxication may aid verbal creativity partly by lowering the ability to control one’s thoughts, …. alcohol reduces recall of sequences of sounds and images but leaves working memory unaffected.

Sault’s team has also reported that intoxicated individuals become less afraid to make mistakes, another possible creativity booster.